Indoor GPS: The New Battleground in Map Wars

Apple has acquired the indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM, a sign that a war over indoor mobile-location services is heating up, Jessica Lessin reports. Photo: Apple.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... Apple betting big on Angel GP at sealing a story from the front page of the section By Jessica Lessin ... welcome to Digits I'm Simon Constable and Jessica Lessin joins us now ... from time to stamp out Jessica my selections on your story ... aam ... in short GPS ... why do we need facts ... lacking that hairband Law Center shopping mall or have internet with fear out where your date is at the airport to how life can take you to get back ... on this is an area where a lot of companies the indoor GPS and being Apple to trying during the nation building ... is can it be a big new layout with OVA ... a lot of useful applications for consumer has been helpfully out though for advertisers and marketers trying to reach people out there in fact ... now Apple is betting big on trying to solve this up by paying twenty million box all around the full one flies slam what is wanted by slammed it ... so my ... plan is a couple year old startup in Silicon Valley that has a method for determining location into words based on why Fi signals ... that there are lots of different ways that people are trying to solve this problem and how to detect location in buildings ... I'll Why thanked plant has the technology they ... use to say that the why Fi signals that are kind and the engine around ... I in these buildings to to do it and we don't allow a lot more about the company acts ... as a small number of employees had been Anqi beating out here is an angel investors in the Bay area ... on that after the acquisitions are all trace of information in their website has been like top line so ... I that's basically all we know now does this help him for a level playing field with with public companies with that sickly with the ... economy like Google's Android division ... also this was certainly Apple trying to step up its mapping arsenal against the dollar on ... we saw that new mapping service come out last year Apple been trying to prevent ... and to cool off areas into our map being a ... free Google maps for Android and not high alas and that anything is exactly the reason why Apple when out there to build its own mapping service ... because it felt that Google was can innovate more for Android users ... and sell I think it's really clear what we're seeing here which is Apple trying to keep up for now ... maybe the Apple of up to surpass good though but it's gotta love Waiting KAL and I think ... this is this time it had inserted into our mapping is an area where he wants to the Apple to me ... I where Google is today and plans ... to call him Eicher soft and others are not party trying to improve inserted in the next staff bought ginger mapping is well south I think consumers are really sexy notice in the south in this case this year ... now they've come up with mobile this company MVP weather's been scrubbed all beastly of their existence and instep secret when do we stop saying this technology show up in our continue devices ... to kick and in a typical sight to see a little bit now so IVZ Android users are getting some of that time ... there's an old bigger industry ally and said Nokia Samsung Qualcomm and others ... that serve identified indoor locations an interesting area and set in two thousand and thirteen they would start to be more applications ... I'm you know it's one of those things as offering technology it's not a lot way to go ... I there still are technically she is ... and then there are a lot of questions around the business model in need for consumers to see new applications ... based a half to be some alternate business model ... which probably have to do with retail is an ad and marketing ... that's still an early Ariad very fragmented so ... I think we'll see things that'll still be the very early days of white tech companies think will be possible ... to content will we wait for the week with a brown thank you Brian